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By Ed Hoffman
By the time you read this, Super Tuesday will be over and the Republicans will have a presumptive nominee. And he just might be Donald Trump.
Some of you have been ready to vote for Donald Trump since the very moment he entered the race. I wasn’t. I liked Trump and had said in the past that I thought he would make a great advisor to the President (any President), simply because of his business acumen. In fact, I was pretty proud of myself because I said it on my radio show months before Trump ever said anything about running.
But I wanted former Texas Governor Rick Perry to be the Republican presidential nominee, followed by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. It didn’t happen for either of them, so I moved on to Carly Fiorina. And sadly, the media failed her. So I have to choose a candidate, and after tomorrow it seems pretty clear that candidate will be Donald Trump – because in the end, he’s going to be the only candidate.
I’m not in love with everything Trump says, like many of his supporters are; for example, I don’t understand why he spends so much time talking about how he’s “leading in all the polls.” Hearing him blow his own horn every day is frustrating to people like me – people who want to hear specifics out of his mouth about how he would govern. But in the grand scheme of things, that’s not something that will keep me home on Election Day 2016. Because on one side of my brain, I think he may be just what our country needs to bring smart people together in the steering of our country’s future. Furthermore, he may be the only one who can help Americans feel good again about being Americans again. And finally, how did staying home on Election Day work out for our country in 2012?
Mitt Romney was a great candidate but because he had a terrible campaign, he failed to convince conservatives that he was one of them. He should have gone for Obama’s throat in the third one-on-one debate, but he held back because he wanted to be a nice guy. And that, combined with the fact that he implemented a sensible state-sponsored healthcare plan as governor of Massachusetts, caused a lot of Republicans to think he wasn’t conservative enough. Other explanations were even less thought out than that; we heard reasons that ranged from “he’s too good looking,” to “too Mormon,” to “too rich.” So we could have had a Boy Scout as our President for the last four years, but because he didn’t check every box on the invisible “ideal candidate” form that “real conservatives” have for themselves, he lost. And we got four more years of Barack Obama.
If Mitt Romney had won, maybe we wouldn’t have pulled out of Iraq prematurely. Maybe ISIS wouldn’t have risen to the global threat it is today, thereby saving the lives of thousands of people around the world. Maybe, just maybe, America would still be respected.
Now, I’m not saying Donald Trump is this election cycle’s Mitt Romney. But he certainly is the candidate who’s dividing the Republican party (if not the entire American electorate), and the candidate that some people are saying they just can’t get behind. He’s the candidate that some are saying will cause them to stay home on Election Day. When you look at it that way, there are many similarities between this election and the one in 2012. I don’t know about you, but I’m not eager to see history repeat itself – so if it means voting for Donald Trump, I’m happy to do it. I might be frustrated that this is what we are left with, but like some of you, I’m getting more excited about the possibility of a Trump presidency. In the end, I’m not about to let Hillary Clinton move back into the White House.
Ed Hoffman is host of The Main Event on AM590, which airs Saturday 9:30 AM- 10:30 AM and Sunday 4:00 PM- 5:00 PM. Follow him on Twitter @EdHoffman, and like him on Facebook by searching The Main Event 590.
